Like a drowning man he stretched out his thoughts for help in every direction. To his mother he stretched them out. To his father he stretched them out. Feebly and automatically he carried his thoughts like a basket of dying fish to the threshold of Christie’s room. “Christie! I must tell you⁠ ⁠… I must , I must tell you!”

But it seemed to him then as if even Christie’s mind were shut to his helplessness. He seemed to hear her cry, “Stop, Wolf, stop! I can’t bear to hear it!”

“This can’t go on,” he thought. “I must end this somehow; or I shall go mad.”

He rose to his feet and began pacing up and down the kitchen.